Foochowese (福州話, Foochow Romanized: ), also known as Fuzhou dialect, Foochow dialect, Foochow, Fuzhounese, or Fuzhouhua, is considered the standard dialect of Min Dong, which is a branch of Min Chinese mainly spoken in the eastern part of Fujian Province. Native speakers also call it Bàng-uâ (平話), meaning the language spoken in everyday life. In Singapore and Malaysia, the language is known as Hokchiu, which is the Min Dong pronunciation of Fuzhou (福州).

Although traditionally called a dialect, Foochowese is actually a separate language according to linguistic standards, because it is not mutually intelligible with other Min languages, let alone other Chinese languages. Therefore, whether Foochowese is a dialect or a language is highly disputable.

Centered in Fuzhou City, Foochowese mainly covers eleven cities and counties, viz.: Fuzhou (福州), Pingnan (屏南), Gutian (古田), Luoyuan (羅源), Minqing (閩清), Lianjiang (連江, Matsu included), Minhou (閩侯), Changle (長樂), Yongtai (永泰), Fuqing (福清) and Pingtan (平潭). Foochowese is also the second local language in northern and middle Fujian cities and counties, like Nanping (南平), Shaowu (邵武), Shunchang (順昌), Sanming (三明) and Youxi (尤溪).

Foochowese is also widely spoken in some regions abroad, especially in Southeastern Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia. The city of Sibu in Malaysia is called "New Fuzhou" due to the influx of immigrants there in the early 1900s. Similarly, the language has spread to the USA, UK and Japan as a result of immigration in recent decades.

History

Formation

Foochowese came into being during the period somewhere between late Tang Dynasty and "Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, and has been considered by most as a Chinese dialect ever since. However, it is also worth noting that its substratum is constituted by large quantities of well-preserved Minyue vocabulary. In this sense, Foochowese is a de facto mixed language of Ancient Chinese and Minyue language.

The famous book Qī Lín Bāyīn (戚林八音, Foochow Romanized: Chék Lìng Báik-ĭng), which was compiled in the 17th century, is the first and the most full-scale rime book that provides a systematic guide to character reading for people speaking or learning Foochowese. It once served to standardize the language and is still widely quoted as an authoritative reference book in modern academic research in Chinese phonology.

Studies by early Western missionaries

In 1842, Fuzhou was open to Westerners as a treaty port after the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing. But due to the language barrier, however, the first Christian missionary base in this city did not take place without difficulties. In order to convert Fuzhou people, those missionaries found it very necessary to make a careful study of the Foochowese. Their most notable works are listed below:

* 1856, M. C. White: The Chinese Language Spoken at Fuh Chau

* 1870, R. S. Maclay & C. C. Baldwin: An alphabetic dictionary of the Chinese language in the Foochow dialect

* 1871, C. C. Baldwin: Manual of the Foochow dialect

* 1891, T. B. Adam: An English-Chinese dictionary of the Foochow dialect

* 1893, Charles Hartwell: Three Character Classic of Gospel in the Foochow Colloquial

* 1898, R. S. Maclay & C. C. Baldwin: An alphabetic dictionary of the Chinese language of the Foochow dialect, 2nd edition

* 1906, The Foochow translation of the complete Bible (, )

* 1923, T. B. Adam & L. P. Peet: An English-Chinese dictionary of the Foochow dialect, 2nd edition

* 1929, R. S. Maclay & C. C. Baldwin (revised and enlarged by S. H. Leger): Dictionary of the Foochow dialect

Status quo

By the end of the Qing Dynasty, Fuzhou society had been largely monolingual. But for decades the Chinese government has discouraged the use of the colloquial in school education and in media, so the number of Mandarin speakers has been greatly boosted. It is reported that merely less than half of the children and youngsters in Fuzhou are able to speak this language.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that Foochowese is currently widely spoken among some native speakers as an "endearing" language. Speaking Foochowese in Fuzhou often allows mutual speakers a certain level of familiarity. Even though Mandarin Chinese is more often heard in casual conversations on the city streets, the careful observer will notice that in more communal settings, such as small neighborhoods in the city or the surrounding countryside, Foochowese is often the dominant language.

In Mainland China, Foochowese has been officially listed as Intangible Cultural Heritage and its promotion work is being systematically carried out. In Matsu, Taiwan, the teaching of Foochowese has been successfully introduced into elementary schools, alongside the Taiwanese localization movement.

Grammar

This section is about Standard Foochowese only. See Regional variations for a discussion of other dialects.

Phonetics

Tones

The sample characters are taken from the Qī Lín Bāyīn.

In Qī Lín Bāyīn, the Foochowese is described as having eight tones, which explains how the book got its title (Bāyīn means "eight tones"). That name, however, is somewhat misleading, because Ĭng-siōng (陰上) and Iòng-siōng (陽上) are identical in tone contour; therefore, only seven tones exist.

Ĭng-ĭk and Iòng-ĭk (or so-called entering tonal) characters are ended with either velar stop [k] or Glottal stop .

Besides those seven tones listed above, two new tonal values, "21" (Buáng-ĭng-ké̤ṳ, 半陰去) and "35" (Buáng-iòng-ké̤ṳ, 半陽去) also occur in connected speech (see Tonal sandhi below).

Tonal sandhi

The two-character tonal sandhi rules are shown in the table below:

Ĭng-ĭk-gák (陰入甲) are Ĭng-ĭk (陰入) characters with glottal stop and Ĭng-ĭk-ék (陰入乙) with /k/.

However, the tonal sandhi rules of more than two characters are much more complicated than can be conveniently displayed in a single table.

Initials

The Chinese characters in the brackets are also sample characters from Qī Lín Bāyīn.

Most Chinese linguists argue that Foochowese should be described as possessing a null onset. In fact, any character that has a null onset begins with a glottal stop [ʔ].

Some speakers find it difficult to distinguish between the initials /n/ and /l/].

No such labiodental phonemes as /f/ or /v/ exist in Foochowese, which is one of the most conspicuous characteristics shared by all branches in the Min Family, as well as Korean and Japanese.

[β] and [ʒ] exist in connected speech (see Initial assimilation below) only.

Initial assimilation

Rimes

The table below shows the eleven vowel phonemes of Foochowese.

In Foochowese codas /-m/, /-n/, and /-ŋ/ have all merged as /-ŋ/; and /-p/, /-t/, /-k/ have all merged as /-ʔ/. Eleven vowel phonemes, together with the codas /-ŋ/ and /-ʔ/, are organized into forty-six rimes.

As has been mentioned above, there are theoretically two different entering tonal codas in Foochowese: /-k/ and /-ʔ/. But for most Foochowese speakers, those two codas are only distinguishable when in the tonal sandhi or initial assimilation. Therefore, most Chinese linguists think that the codas /-k/ and /-ʔ/ has merged together.

Close/Open rimes

For instance, "福" (hók) is a Ĭng-ĭk character and is pronounced as [houʔ²⁴] and "州" (ciŭ) a Ĭng-bìng character with the pronunciation of [tsiu⁵⁵]. When these two characters combine into the word "福州" (Hók-ciŭ, Fuzhou), "福" changes its tonal value from "24" to "21" and, simultaneously, shifts its rime from [-ouʔ] to [-uʔ], so the phrase is pronounced as . While in the word "中國" (Dṳ̆ng-guók, China), "中" is a Ĭng-bìng character and therefore its close rime never changes, though it does change its tonal value from "55" to "53" in the tonal sandhi.

The phenomenon of close/open rimes is unique to Foochowese and this feature makes it especially intricate and hardly intelligible even to other Min languages.

Phonological features

Vocabulary

The majority of Foochowese vocabulary dates back to more than 1,200 years ago. Some daily-used words are even preserved as they were in Tang Dynasty, which can be illustrated by a poem of a famous Chinese poet Gu Kuang (顧況). In his poem Jiǎn (囝), Gu Kuang explicitly noted:

In Foochowese, "囝" (giāng) and "郎罷" (nòng-mâ) are still in use today, without any slightest change.

Words from Ancient Chinese

This table shows some Foochowese words from Classical Chinese, as contrasted to Mandarin Chinese:

¹ "看" (káng) is also used as the verb "to look" in Foochowese.

² "養" (iōng) in Foochowese means "give birth to (a child)".

And this table shows some words that are both used in Foochowese and Mandarin Chinese, while the meanings in Mandarin Chinese have altered:

Words from Minyue language

The literary and colloquial readings

This table displays some widely used characters in Foochowese which have both literary and colloquial readings:

Loan words from English

• kŏk, [khouʔ⁵], noun, meaning "an article of dress", is from the word "coat";
• nă̤h, [nɛʔ⁵], noun, meaning "a meshwork barrier in tennis or badminton", is from the word "net";
• pèng, [pheiŋ⁵³], noun, meaning "oil paint", is from the word "paint";
• pĕng-giāng, , noun, meaning "a small sum of money", is from the word "penny";
• tă̤h, [thɛʔ⁵], noun, meaning "money", is from the word "take";
• gă̤-lō̤, , noun, meaning "girl" in a humorous way, is from the word "girl";
• sò̤, [so⁵³], verb, meaning "to shoot (a basket)", is from the word "shoot";
• ă-gì, , verb, meaning "to pause (usually a game)", is from the word "again".
• Mā-lăk-gă, , meaning "Southeastern Asian (esp. Singapore and Malaysia)", is from the word "Malacca".

Other features of Foochowese grammar

Examples

• Foochowese (Fuzhou dialect): 福州話 / / [huʔ²¹ tsiu⁵³ uɑ²⁴²]
• Hello: 汝好 / / [ny³³ ho³³]
• Good-bye: 再見 / / [tsai⁵³ kiɛŋ²¹³]
• Please: 請 / / [tshiaŋ³³]; 起動 / / [khi⁵⁵ lɔyŋ²⁴²]
• Thank you: 謝謝 / / [sia⁵³ liɑ²⁴²]; 起動 / Kī-dâe̤ng / [khi⁵⁵ lɔyŋ²⁴²]
• Sorry: 對不住 / / [tøy²¹ puʔ⁵ tsøy²⁴²]
• This: 嚽 / / [tsui⁵³]; 啫 / / [tsia³³]; 茲 / / [tsi³³]
• That: 噲 / / [hui⁵³]; 嘻 / / [hia³³]; 許 / / [hi³³]
• How much?: 偌 / (niŏh-uâi) / [nuai²⁴²] ([nuoʔ²¹ uɑi²⁴²])
• Yes: 正是 / / [tsiaŋ⁵³ nɛi²⁴²]; 無綻 / / [mo²¹ lɑŋ²⁴²]; 著 / (Duŏh) / [tyoʔ⁵] ([tuoʔ⁵])
• No: 伓是 / / [ŋ⁵³ nɛi²⁴²]; 綻 / / [tɑŋ²⁴²]; 賣著 / (Mâ̤ duŏh) / [me⁵⁵ tyoʔ⁵] ([me⁵⁵ tuoʔ⁵])
• I don't understand: 我賣會意 / / [ŋuai³³ me²¹ hui⁵³ ɛi²¹³]
• What's his name?: 伊名什乇？ / / [i⁵⁵ miaŋ⁵³ sie²¹ nɔʔ²⁴]
• Where's the hotel?: 賓館洽底所？ / / [piŋ⁵³ kuaŋ³³ kaʔ⁵ tie²⁴ nœ³³]
• How can I go to the school?: 去學校怎樣行？ / / [kho⁵³ haʔ²¹ hɑu²⁴² tsuoŋ⁵⁵ yɔŋ²⁴² kiaŋ⁵³]
• Do you speak Foochowese?: 汝會講福州話賣？ / / [ny³³ e⁵³ kouŋ³³ huʔ²¹ tsiu⁵³ uɑ²⁴² ma²⁴²]
• Do you speak English?: 汝會講英語賣？ / / [ny³³ e⁵³ kouŋ³³ iŋ⁵³ ŋy³³ ma²⁴²]

Regional variations

Writing system

Chinese characters

Most of the characters of Foochowese stem from Ancient Chinese and can therefore be written in Chinese characters. Many books published in Qing Dynasty have been written in this traditional way, such as Mǐndū Biéjì (閩都別記, Foochow Romanized: Mìng-dŭ Biék-gé) and the Bible in Foochowese. However, Chinese characters as the writing system for Foochowese do have many shortcomings.

Firstly, a great number of characters are unique to Foochowese, so that they can only be written in informal ways. For instance, the character "mâ̤", a negative word, has no common form. Some write it as "賣" or "袂", both of which share with it an identical pronunciation but has a totally irrelevant meaning; and others prefer to use a newly-created character combining "勿" and "會", but this character is not included in most fonts.

Secondly, Foochowese has been excluded from the educational system for many decades. As a result, many if not all take for granted that Foochowese does not have a formal writing system and when they have to write it, they tend to misuse characters with a similar Mandarin Chinese enunciation. For example, "會使 (â̤ sāi)", meaning "okay", are frequently written as "阿塞" because they are uttered almost in the same way.

Foochow Romanized

Foochow Romanized, also known as Bàng-uâ-cê (平話字, BUC for short) or Hók-ciŭ-uâ Lò̤-mā-cê (福州話羅馬字), is a romanized orthography for Foochowese adopted in the middle of 19th century by American and English missionaries. It had varied at different times, and became standardized several decades later. Foochow Romanized was mainly used inside of Church circles, and was taught in some Mission Schools in Fuzhou.

Mǐnqiāng Kuàizì

Mǐnqiāng Kuàizì (閩腔快字, Foochow Romanized: Mìng-kiŏng Kuái-cê), literally meaning "Fujian Colloquial Fast Characters", is a Qieyin System (切音系統) for Foochowese designed by Chinese scholar and calligrapher Li Jiesan (力捷三) in 1896.

Literary and art forms

See also

• Qī Lín Bāyīn
• Foochow Romanized
• Min Chinese
• Min Dong
• Min Nan

References

Books and other sources

• Cathryn Donohue: The tone-vowel interaction in Fuzhou revisited, University of Nevada, Reno
• Chen, Leo & Norman, Jerry: An Introduction to the Foochow Dialect, San Francisco State Coll., CA, 1965.

External links

• Fuzhou Dialect Textbook: Elementary school textbook in Matsu.
• Fuzhou dialect phonology, by James Campbell.
• SĬNG GÔ IÓK CIÒNG CṲ̆: Bible in Foochow Romanized.
• Foochow Audio Bible, New Testament
• Five Languages Translator
• Fuzhou Dialect Resources